Many people can benefit from open access to cultural heritage in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes — from creators seeking inspiration to researchers discovering new interpretations, all the way to cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) connecting with more audiences, and the general public making sense of the world we live in. In our report What are the Benefits of Open Culture? A new CC Publication, we show how, by removing any distance between people and heritage, openness gives rise to a multitude of connections with, about, or through cultural heritage. 

The CC licenses and public domain tools are a simple and effective way for CHIs, such as museums, libraries and archives, to make heritage materials (and associated metadata) open so that they can be shared widely for the broadest possible access, use and reuse (including commercial use and modification), free of charge, and with no or few copyright restrictions. 

Navigating the right license or tool can be tricky, as CHIs may share a wide range of different types of materials. But if you remember only one thing, it’s that faithful digital reproductions of public domain materials must stay in the public domain — no new copyright or related right applies to the digitized version. Public domain materials are materials that are no longer or never were protected by copyright.

This is a position that Creative Commons (CC) has been championing for years as part of our Open Culture Program. In other words, no new copyright (or related right) should arise over the creation of a digitized “twin.” Europeana and the Communia Association, among many other open culture organizations, share this position. It is also aligns with Article 14 of the 2019 EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which states that: “when the term of protection of a work of visual art has expired, any material resulting from an act of reproduction of that work is not subject to copyright […]”.

It’s also important to remember that digital reproductions of public domain works cannot be CC-licensed, since CC licenses can only be used with in-copyright content. Instead, we recommend using a CC public domain tool, putting the digital reproductions squarely and unequivocally into the public domain. This not only conveys clear information about the public domain status of the materials, it also contributes to the thriving, blooming commons of knowledge and culture that we need to address the world’s most pressing problems.

Some CHIs might want to get credit for sharing heritage from their collections. It is not good practice to use a license in this case. Instead, there are different ways to encourage users to refer back to CHIs, as we explain in Nudging Users To Reference Institutions When Using Public Domain Materials. The guidelines offer a fresh and innovative approach to prompting users to reference the institution when using public domain materials and present various design ideas to instigate behavioral change. They address key questions, including:

• How can institutions nudge users to reference them?
• What information should be included in a reference statement?
• What would a nudge look like in practice?
• How to organize the data needed to implement these ideas?

Regarding metadata, we strongly encourage that it be dedicated to the public domain using the legal tool Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0). Data is largely made of highly factual content that is considered uncopyrightable, but uncertainties might remain. The CC0 waiver places all data squarely and unequivocally in the public domain worldwide and clarifies that data reuse is not restricted by copyright, related rights or database rights — those rights are all surrendered. CC0 can support maximizing the reuse of data, with benefits including: 

• enabling others to validate, replicate and put the data to new uses
• facilitating enhanced collaboration and enrichment
• increasing transparency 
• speeding the discovery and understanding of solutions to planetary and societal needs.

For materials created by the CHIs and protected by copyright, we recommend CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY 4.0 or CC0 1.0 to enable maximum dissemination and reuse.

For different types of content, we recommend different CC tools or licenses to achieve optimal engagement and reuse, as summarized in this table: 

Using CC licenses and public domain tools to share cultural heritage materials unlocks vast potential for open culture to blossom in the cultural heritage sector. By offering enhanced legal certainty, CHIs have the ability to engage more deeply in the open culture movement and make their vast collections openly accessible to everyone.

For more information:

• Download this information
• Learn more about our license stewardship
• Join the CC Open Culture Platform
• Join the TAROCH Coalition 
• Take our CC Certificate online training

Contact us at info@creativecommons.org  

The post Recommended Licenses and Tools for Cultural Heritage Content appeared first on Creative Commons.

With new publications, events, and the launch of a new coalition, the CC Open Culture Program accomplished a lot! Here are some highlights:

1. At the Open Culture Strategic Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, we gathered nearly 50 experts from every continent to co-create a strategic roadmap for future action, charting a course for UNESCO Member States to draft an agreement (otherwise referred to as a legal instrument). This would promote open solutions to enable equitable access to cultural heritage worldwide. Read our blog post and full report for more: CC strategic workshop reveals big opportunities for open access to cultural heritage.  
2. In the wake of the Lisbon workshop, we launched the Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage( TAROCH) Coalition, a collaborative effort to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. Read our blog post Creative Commons Launches TAROCH Coalition for Open Access to Cultural Heritage and TAROCH information brief and apply to join the Coalition now! 
3. We published Don’t be a Dinosaur; or, The Benefits of Open Culture, which distills the views expressed in our Open Culture Voices (OCV) series about the ways in which so many people can benefit from open culture. Read more in this blog post: What are the Benefits of Open Culture? A new CC Publication.
4. We released guidelines for open culture that offer a fresh and innovative approach to prompting users to reference the institution when using public domain materials: Nudging Users to Reference Institutions when Using Public Domain Materials. Read more on our blog: Where in the world is… this public domain material? Helping users refer to host institutions.
5. We published Open Culture Capsules, a video series that addresses some of the most frequently asked questions about our work in the Open Culture Program. Our blog has more details and links to all the episodes: Top Questions about Open Culture Answered in Five Short Videos.  

In addition, we published even more blog posts on a wide range of topics (check out this one for example: Moving Institutions Toward Open—Building on 6 Years of the Open GLAM Survey). We also organized training activities (watch this webinar we organized with Connecticut Humanities: Open Access Made Easy: How to Open Your Collections for Greater and Better Sharing) and offered the CC Certificate on Open Culture. We collaborated with Europeana to review their Public Domain Charter. 

We took the stage at several events to promote open culture, such as:

• WIPO SCCR meeting in Geneva, to promote exceptions and limitations for cultural heritage institutions worldwide
• AI Sauna in Helsinki
• Communia Salon: The hollowing of the Public Domain 
• Wikimania in Katowice (watch the full recording of our TAROCH presentation and panel)
• Living Heritage workshop in Brussels
• Communia’s Digital Knowledge Act event in Brussels
• UNESCO International Conference on the Memory of the World in Paris
• Towards a National Collection Conference in Manchester
• EUScreen Symposium in Barcelona
• and much more!

We also supported our community through the OC platform and its working groups and community-led activities. 

The Open Culture team is thrilled that we will once again be offering the CC Certificate on Open Culture in 2025. Learn more and register! We look forward to building on those achievements and continuing to ensure we can all access heritage to connect to our past and imagine our futures. Contact us at info@creativecommons.org for more information.

The post CC Open Culture: 2024 Year in Review appeared first on Creative Commons.

We are excited to share a new video series titled Open Culture Capsules. In this multi-series video collection, we address some of the most frequently asked questions about our work in Creative Commons’ (CC) Open Culture Program. You can preview the series below and find each episode in full on the the CC YouTube channel.

The series features insights from CC staff and facilitators from the CC Certificate Course on Open Culture. Thank you for your participation in making this series a success! 

Keep reading to find previews and overview of all five episodes: 

Episode 1 (parts 1 and 2) —  What does Creative Commons do for Open Culture? Brigitte Vézina, CC’s Director of Policy and Open Culture, talks about how the Open Culture Program is driving policy change for fair and equitable open access to cultural heritage. In this episode, Brigitte shares how capacity building and the Open Culture Platform are empowering a global network of people passionate about open culture.

Episode 2 (parts 1 and 2) —  What is open culture? Shanna Hollich, CC’s Learning and Training Manager, explains that Open Culture at CCencompasses open access to both contemporary creativity and cultural heritage, promoting sharing under permissive terms with CC licenses and tools as well as other labels and statements. 

Episode 3 (parts 1 and 2) — What are the main benefits of open culture? Revekka Kefalea, CC Certificate facilitator, shows how, by embracing open access, cultural heritage institutions (like museums, libraries and archives) can boost their digital relevance, how researchers and educators can gain new opportunities for collaboration, and how creators have increased access to resources that drive creativity.

Episode 4 (parts 1 and 2) — How do you open up a collection? Sionan Guenther, CC Certificate facilitator, walks through the first steps of opening up cultural heritage and highlights what is important to consider from the get-go. 

Episode 5 (parts 1, 2 and 3) — How to mark open heritage? Evelin (scann) Heidel, CC Certificate facilitator, explains the basics of marking heritage materials with CC licenses and public domain tools,  where to place the license or tool, and how these help ensure cultural heritage is accessible, with clear conditions for use, allowing everyone to freely engage, remix, and keep cultural heritage alive.

If you would like to watch more video content from CC’s Open Culture Program, check out Open Culture Voices and the Open Culture Live webinar series.

The post Top Questions about Open Culture Answered in Short Videos appeared first on Creative Commons.

Creative Commons (CC) is proud to launch the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage), a collaborative effort to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. We are grateful to the Arcadia Fund for supporting this initiative. Below we share an overview of TAROCH and invite mission-aligned organizations and institutions to apply to join. 

TAROCH At A Glance

• TAROCH stands for Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage.
• TAROCH is a community initiative led by Creative Commons.
• The mission is to encourage UNESCO Member States to draft and adopt a Recommendation (or other standard-setting instrument) promoting open solutions to enhance access to cultural heritage in the public domain.
• The ultimate goal of the TAROCH Coalition is that cultural heritage is equitably accessible to all, in line with UNESCO’s broader mission and cultural and information policy, in particular intercultural dialog and cultural exchanges, thereby contributing to building more connected, resilient, and sustainable societies.

Who Drives TAROCH?

CC is the organization steering and funding TAROCH. The Coalition is led by representatives of a global, diverse community of organizations and institutions involved in cultural heritage and with an interest in open cultural heritage. While our individual missions differ, we all believe in the transformative power of open solutions and share a vision of fair and equitable access to cultural heritage. Meet the initial members of the TAROCH Coalition!

For a complete and up-to-date list of coalition members, please refer to the Statement of Commitment.

Why Is Promoting Open Access to Cultural Heritage Important?

We believe that culture, including cultural heritage, is the foundation of humanity and that open access can contribute to helping people around the world to:

• Exercise their fundamental rights to participate in cultural life and enjoy the arts, as enshrined in Article 27(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and Article 15 of the United Nations (UN) International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).
• Preserve and access documentary heritage including in digital form, as enshrined in the 2015 UNESCO Recommendation.
• Benefit from a more prosperous, inclusive, and resilient world by advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and leaving no one behind, including the recognition of culture as a Sustainable Development Goal in and of itself.Honor, promote, and preserve cultural and linguistic diversity and cultural heritage as per the 2024 UN Pact for the Future.
• Activate the 2022 Mondiacult Declaration and enjoy culture, including cultural heritage, as well as the digital commons (in keeping with the Global Digital Compact) as global public goods.

What are TAROCH’s Key Deliverables?

We aim to achieve the following by May 2026:

• Develop and adopt a Statement on Open Access to Cultural Heritage for signature by civil society organizations and institutions.
• Widely implement an advocacy strategy and disseminate advocacy tools and materials to promote the wider recognition of open access to cultural heritage.

The delivery of these two milestones will set the stage for on-the-ground advocacy efforts by a network of local ambassadors encouraging UNESCO member states to develop and adopt a UNESCO standard-setting instrument by 2029.

For More Information about TAROCH and to Read About Our Work To Date:

• Read our 2024 report CC Strategic Workshop Reveals Big Opportunities for Open Access to Cultural Heritage.
• Read our Open Culture webpage
• Read our Resources page

Join the TAROCH Coalition

Any organization or institution supporting the mission statement of the Coalition can apply for membership in the Coalition.

• Read the Statement of Commitment.
• Submit your application through the membership application form.

For more information, contact us at info@creativecommons.org.

The post Creative Commons Launches TAROCH Coalition for Open Access to Cultural Heritage appeared first on Creative Commons.

Last May, a diverse group of nearly 50 experts from every continent took part in Creative Commons’ Open Culture Strategic Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, to advance our TAROCH initiative — Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage. Over the course of two days, participants collaborated to co-create a strategic roadmap for future action, charting a course towards the elaboration by UNESCO Member States of an international legal instrument that would promote open solutions to enable equitable access to cultural heritage worldwide, in line with UNESCO’s broader mission on openness and heritage-related policy goals.

Today, we’re excited to share the workshop’s report, capturing the event’s highlights. Here are two of the main outcomes:

• A narrower focus from “open culture” to “open cultural heritage in the public domain” — moving from TAROC to TAROCH.
• Flexibility regarding the nature of the legal instrument: recommendation, declaration, or other type of UNESCO instrument.

The report also outlines anticipated developments, highlighting key milestones on the horizon. It concludes with a set of recommended actions to build on the momentum gained in Lisbon.

We are now in the process of building an architecture to organize future work and establish ladders of engagement. Watch this space!

Read the full report 

If you’d like to learn more, please reach out to us at info@creativecommons.org.

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Creative Commons’ Open Culture Platform is supporting 25 institutions in opening up access to their collections by the end of 2025. Members of the Platform community will be working together to create a policy template, conduct outreach, identify risk management strategies, and provide a guide for identifying which collections’ items to openly license first. Initiatives like Douglas McCarthy and Andrea Wallace’s Open GLAM Survey and the GLAM-E Lab provide essential resources to the GLAM community who are working collaboratively top open access to our cultural heritage. Read on to learn more about the Open GLAM Survey and its contributions to open culture. 

The Open GLAM Survey

Back in 2018, there was a lack of comprehensive, up-to-date information about open GLAM policy and practice at national or international levels – and no shared place for the growing open GLAM community to see or add relevant data. Motivated to better understand and share that global picture, Douglas and Andrea created the Survey and began collecting instances of digitised public domain collections released by GLAMs for any reuse purpose. From an initial list of around 40 organisations, the Open GLAM Survey was born, housed in a publicly accessible Google Sheet where it remains to this day.

Today, the Survey includes over 1687 cultural institutions and organisations from 55 countries, focusing on open collections made available on their websites or external platforms. It offers direct links to almost 100 million public domain and openly licensed digital surrogates. Over the years, the Survey has expanded in scope and complexity, documenting a range of data points, including institution type, geographical location, rights statements, APIs, terms of use, open data volume, and many more. It is also comprehensively recorded in Wikidata.

In addition to an ‘About This Survey’ tab, users will find tabs containing informative visualisations on various aspects of the data, such as the one below.

Given the diversity of practice among GLAMs claiming new copyrights in digital surrogates of public domain works, Douglas and Andrea review all entries to ensure their policies meet the international standards of ‘open’. The Survey is guided by Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Definition and its statement that ‘open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share [content] for any purpose’. The Open Definition provides a list of licenses, rights statements, and legal tools that accord with this statement and the Survey’s authors have augmented the list with other statements (such as The Commons on Flickr’s ‘no known copyright restrictions’).

The Survey’s granular recording of the open licenses, public domain tools, and equivalent rights statements that GLAMs apply to digital surrogates and metadata means that it contains a treasure trove of information for a range of users, including: 

• students of copyright law, the digital humanities, art and cultural heritage, and museum studies 
• practitioners looking to design their own open access policy, using examples from the international landscape, or nationally if there are jurisdiction-specific issues at play
• policymakers who want to find examples of good practice to reference 
• anyone who wants to reuse cultural heritage and digital collections without having to pay image fees

From the start, the Survey has been developed by, with, and for members of the Open GLAM community. In addition to the desk-based research that forms its foundation, the Survey has gained much from the contributions of open culture enthusiasts, heritage professionals, and Wikipedians. The Survey has been presented to international audiences by Douglas and Andrea, cited in numerous academic articles and, in 2018, was referenced in a UK Parliament debate on how museums and galleries balance public access with commercial reuse of digital content.

Using GLAM websites, data aggregators, third party platforms, and information circulated among the wider open GLAM community, the Survey tracks open access activity at all scales, ranging from a historical centre’s single CC0 image published to Wikimedia Commons, to a national archive’s publication of millions of images on Europeana. The Survey is constantly growing as new GLAMs are identified and verified as meeting the criteria for inclusion. This means that the Survey includes all known examples of open GLAM policy and practice; however, it is by no means exhaustive. Indeed, there are clear representation gaps in the data – which in themselves are important to document and highlight, as shown by the map below. 

In this way, the Survey will likely never be complete –  Andrea and Douglas are confident that there are undiscovered instances of open practice awaiting inclusion, alongside numerous new open GLAM participants expected to emerge in the years ahead.

Do you know a cultural institution or organisation that’s missing from the Survey? Are there other data points that would be useful to collect for the open GLAM community? Have you used the Survey data in some way? Are you a CC Open Culture Platform member that has helped an institution move to open? If so, Douglas and Andrea would be delighted to hear from you. You can propose a new entry using this Google Form or contact Andrea and Douglas via email at openglamsurvey@gmail.com.

To find out more about the Open GLAM Survey:

• Watch Andrea and Douglas present on open GLAM at this Australian Digital Alliance webinar
• Take a look at this series of articles by Douglas
• Read this op-ed by Douglas and Andrea for the international art magazine Apollo
• See how the Survey data has been used Andrea’s recent paper on the open GLAM landscape
• Check out the Open GLAM Survey
• Check out the free resources and other work by the GLAM-E Lab

Would you like to get involved in CC’s efforts to move more institutions toward open? Join the Open Culture Platform, where you can learn more about each working groups’ efforts and how you can help move 25 institutions by 2025. 

The post Moving Institutions Toward Open—Building on 6 Years of the Open GLAM Survey appeared first on Creative Commons.

TAROC aims to support the international community in developing a positive, affirmative, and influential international normative instrument (possibly a UNESCO “recommendation”) enshrining the values, objectives, and mechanisms for open culture, notably open heritage,  to flourish. Such an instrument would recognize the importance of global open sharing of cultural heritage as a means to activate and support wider cultural and information policy ambitions. Concretely, it would help remove undue barriers and promote equitable access to cultural heritage, especially in the digital environment, for a more inclusive and connected world.

The aim of the workshop was to build on the foundation previously laid and design a roadmap for future action. Over two productive days of collaborative work facilitated by Mona Ebdrup and Abdul Dube, a diverse collective of knowledgeable experts and driven activists articulated a shared vision for the elaboration of a UNESCO instrument.

Véronique Guèvremont (Université Laval and UNESCO Chair on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions) opened the workshop with an inspiring keynote on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead and Claire McGuire (IFLA) led an eye-opening discussion with Lutz Möller (German UNESCO National Commission), Fackson Banda (UNESCO Memory of the World Program), Jaco Du Toit (UNESCO Access to Information), Peter Scholing (National Library of Aruba and Memory of the World Latin America and the Caribbean), and Harriet Deacon (University of Hull) who shared valuable insights on the important considerations to account for in the process towards a recommendation. Andrea Wallace (University of Exeter) and Teresa Nobre (Communia Association) offered key practical and policy advice to anchor openness in the cultural heritage sector. All participants shared invaluable input and showed deep  engagement throughout the two days in Lisbon. Thank you all!

Here’s what some of the participants said about the workshop: 

“How can we improve access to cultural heritage? How can open licenses and technologies help? How could a UNESCO Recommendation help that regard? In Lisbon, Portugal, Creative Commons has assembled some 50 experts from around the globe to discuss next steps. At Goethe-Institut e.V. Lisbon.” — Lutz Möller, Deputy Secretary-General for the German Commission for UNESCO, Germany

“The TAROC Strategic Workshop was an intense, yet super inspiring time in Lisbon, empowering to witness how the idea of having values behind Open Heritage translated into UNESCO recommendations is shaping up supported by the right mindset, energy and expertise of an amazing group of advocates from all over the world and it allowed me to hope the goal is achievable.” — Maja Drabczyk, Chair of the Board, Head of policy and advocacy, Centrum Cyfrowe, Poland

“Two days of discussion in Lisbon brought out the complexities, challenges, and many points of unity among people and sectors seeking to make the world’s creativity more accessible. It also brought home the realities of engaging with inter-governmental processes that have their own momentum and language. But we have a plan, and I left with a lot of energy!” — Matt Voigts, independent, Netherlands

“Very happy to take part in such interesting conversations around open culture, public domain, and the digital world surrounded by colleagues that I admire and have followed since I began my advocacy work within the digital rights environment. Thanks so much to Creative Commons” — Patricia Diaz, Executive Director, Wikimedia Chile, Chile

“The workshop inspired me a lot and helped me think of some ideas — hopefully I can implement some and write to you all with a collaboration proposal!” — Medhavi Gandhi, Founder, The Heritage Lab, India 

“We gathered as a diverse team of experts and activists from around the world to strategize how open culture values might be embodied in a future UNESCO recommendation. There is much work to do, but we left energized and optimistic.” — Douglas McCarthy, Head of Library Learning Centre,  Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Furthermore, Minister of Finance and Culture of Aruba, Xiomara Maduro, stated in an official press release: “The global experts who participated in the discussions emphasized the importance of Open Culture in strengthening social resilience and fostering an environment of knowledge and experience sharing.”

Overall, the workshop consolidated broad community support and mapped out concrete next steps for the TAROC initiative. We are currently assessing the event’s rich outcomes and will be sharing more in-depth insights soon. Stay tuned!

The post A Quick Look at the CC Strategic Workshop on Open Heritage appeared first on Creative Commons.

With CC considering new ways to engage with generative AI, we are excited to share highlights from the conversation that demonstrate some of the complex considerations regarding open sharing, cultural heritage, and contemporary creativity.

Suzanne Duncan, Chief Operating Officer at Te Hiku Media, New Zealand, said that her organization was born out of the Māori rights movement. It is collecting an archive of Māori language samples on its own platform to maintain data sovereignty. Te Hiku Media is now working to use AI tools to teach the language to heritage language reclaimers. Suzanne recommended that the best way to ensure diverse representation in AI outputs is to have communities involved in the building and testing of AI models, ideally by communities, for communities.

Minne Atairu, interdisciplinary artist and doctoral student in the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA, shared examples of her works using the Benin Bronzes, artworks from Nigeria stolen by the British in the 19th century, and the changes that happened in the visual representation of art after the looting took place. Using images of the stolen items, she used models to explore visuals and materials and convert text to 3D models. Minne hopes that better ways of attribution and compensation can be re-envisioned, and that the wealth generated by AI and other technologies should be spread among creators, not just tech executives.

Bartolomeo Meletti, Head of Knowledge Exchange at CREATe, University of Glasgow, Scotland, spoke about copyright law and copyright exceptions in the UK, EU and US, focusing on what one can do with AI and copyrighted works without permission from the copyright owner, especially for purposes of research and education. He works to create guidance about how to navigate those permissions with generative AI in mind.

Michael Trizna, Data Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution, has explored how generative AI can help to speed up processes like providing “alt text” (text descriptions of visual materials) to images, without compromising the accuracy of the audio or visual description of works. He has also worked on an AI values statement, including labeling AI generated content as such and mechanisms for the audience to provide feedback. Mike raised concerns about the fact that only a few large cultural heritage institutions are resourced to engage with generative AI responsibly.

Overall, panelists conveyed a need for greater AI literacy to enable people to interrogate AI and ensure it can be used for good.

Watch the recording here.

CC is a non-profit that relies on contributions to sustain our work. Support CC in our efforts to promote better sharing at creativecommons.org/donate.

What is Open Culture Live?

In this series, we tackle some of the more complex challenges that face the open culture movement, bringing in speakers with personal and professional expertise on the topic.

• Back to Basics: Open Culture for Beginners 
• Respectful Terminologies & Changing the Subject 
• Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution
• Maximizing the Value(s) of Open Access in Cultural Heritage Institutions

The post Recap & Recording: “Open Culture in the Age of AI: Concerns, Hopes and Opportunities” appeared first on Creative Commons.

We called for proposals and invited the community to vote on the activities. The projects needed to have a focus on building community through outreach and helping institutions move toward open. Here are the four projects that are being funded. We look forward to sharing more about the projects when they are complete.

Public Domain Digitization Advocacy across GLAM Institutions in Nigeria

Àlàáfíàbámí Ọládipúpọ̀

The Public Domain consists of materials from which society derives knowledge and inspiration to create new cultural and creative works. Having a great interest in the Public Domain, Free Knowledge Africa has tasked itself with organizing a series of events and projects fashioned to promote Public Domain works in Nigeria. In doing so, we have been able to document over a thousand works in the Public Domain database we are currently building and have been able to digitize a few of them.

This proposed activity, funded by the Creative Commons Open Culture Activity fund, seeks to advocate for the Public Domain within GLAM Institutions across Nigeria. Our primary goal is to inspire these institutions to embrace openness and digitize the valuable works within their collections. Building upon our established connections with the National Library of Nigeria, developed through previous projects, we aim to extend our outreach to 5 state branches and encourage the adoption of Open Access practices.

Beyond advocacy, our initiative includes the identification and digitization of approximately 100 Public Domain works from each library, totalling at least 500 digitized works. Subsequently, we plan to upload these digitized materials and create Wikidata Items for a minimum of 500 Public Domain Works in Nigeria.

Expected outcomes include heightened awareness and acceptance of Open Access principles among GLAM Institutions, leading to increased digitization efforts. The project aims to significantly contribute to the preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage, making a substantial impact on the accessibility and appreciation of Public Domain materials in Nigeria.

The Gateway to Amazonian Knowledge: A Project for Openly Disseminating Cultural Collections from Belém

João Alexandre Peschanski

“The Gateway to Amazonian Knowledge” project intends to openly disseminate cultural collections from Belém — especially connected to biodiversity and traditional culture — emphasizing the crucial role of open knowledge in preparing for COP-30 in Belém. This initiative involves a collaborative process to enhance content donation from local institutions, with a particular focus on strengthening partnerships with the Emílio Goeldi Museum. By fostering open access to cultural resources, the project seeks to enrich understanding and appreciation of Amazonian heritage while promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing on a global scale. This specific project will be part of a broader campaign called Wiki Loves Pará, that is especially geared towards contributing textual content about the Brazilian Amazonian Forest into Wikipedia.

Unearthing Ghana’s Hidden Heritage: Exploring Historical Artifacts in Northern Kingdoms

Mohammed Awal Alhassan

The northern half of Ghana, steeped in a rich and often overlooked history, harbors a treasure trove of undocumented artifacts. Within its borders lie the ancient Dagbon, Mamprugu, and Waala Kingdoms—custodians of a cultural heritage spanning centuries. Our project aims to explore and document these artifacts, increasing awareness through Wikipedia articles and images/videos on Wikimedia Commons. Additionally, we will create structured data for these artifacts using Wikidata, which could be utilized in the future to develop visualization tools and other resources.

Tangible items such as traditional woven fabrics like “smock” clothing, handmade beads, wooden sculptures, swords, bows and arrows, traditional drums, and handmade pottery items such as bowls, jars, and decorative pieces all reflect the region’s historical connections to weaponry and hunting practices, and as well reflect the local craftsmanship and cultural heritage making them valuable artifacts that reflect local craftsmanship and traditions.

Open access to cultural heritage/GLAM Rwanda

Nyirahabihirwe Clementine

In Rwanda there is a lack of awareness and understanding about open cultural practices in GLAMs.

Some proposed activities of this project are:

1. CC Chapter Rwanda aim to reach out new members online and offline and reach over 40 members for a baseline of  15 members, these will be achieved through special 4 online events and active social media engagement
2. CC Chapter Rwanda aims to reach out new members offline specifically in 10 GLAM institutions, through 3 workshops which will be held in 3 different districts (Huye, Nyanza, Kigali City) with 40 participants from different communities, districts and GLAMs. These workshops will enhance collaborative dialogue methodology among stakeholders, which will be designed as part of the project for its sustainability.
   • Explain them the importance of the  visibility of GLAM collection on online,  identify together the challenges and way forward for promoting them and increase their engagement in open GLAM practices.
   • Make the Rwandan community aware about Creative Common licenses/tools: Online training  on Open practice, the use of Open CC licenses & attributions to increase the online visibility of GLAM collections.
   • Document taken pictures from GLAMs in Rwanda on Wikimedia Commons and improving Wikipedia articles.
   • Making resources from different GLAMs available to be used by anyone around the world through Creative Commons tools and licenses.
   • Provide Wikimedians around the World with Rwandan digitized resources to contribute to the continued improvement of Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia and its sister projects (WikiSource, Wikidata, WikiCommons…).
   • Creation and engagement GLAM community: Offer opportunities for members to participate in meaningful activities and events that build GLAM community and foster engagement, seek out collaborations with other groups and organizations to increase the size and diversity of the community.
   • Encourage and support community members to take on leadership roles and responsibilities. In total we will have +30 participants (20 from five GLAM institutions + 10 CC Rwanda members + others who will be interested).

We plan to report back at the end of the year with the results of each project. Congratulations to the winners!

Learn more about CC’s Open Culture Program, and if you’d like to get more involved, check out the Open Culture Platform.

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On Wednesday, 8 May  2024, at 2:00 pm UTC, CC’s Open Culture Program will be hosting a new webinar in our Open Culture Live series titled “Open Culture in the Age of AI: Concerns, Hopes and Opportunities.”

At CC, we promote better sharing and open access to cultural heritage to help build and sustain vibrant and thriving societies. With generative AI entering the scene, what are some of the issues to consider to ensure institutions make the most of this new technology and avoid its pitfalls as they fulfill their missions? In this panel we will discuss some of the opportunities and risks that come along with embracing generative AI in cultural heritage institutions, and some ideas for engaging in this new technology for the benefit of institutions, creators, as well as curious visitors and learners.

Firstly, looking inwards,  what are some of the ways in which cultural heritage might implement the use of AI to automate and improve labor-intensive processes as well as explore and enrich their data?

Secondly, looking outwards, when it comes to sharing their cultural heritage collections and related data online, potential use as AI training data is on the minds of many institutions. On the one hand, collections can offer important and useful training data for beneficial projects. Indeed, more diverse inputs to training datasets could aid in countering bias and ensuring outputs are more representative. On the other hand, especially in the age of AI, sharing collections needs to be done responsibly, respectfully and ethically, and institutions must remain guided by their public service missions. With generative AI here to stay, how can these considerations be adequately balanced? How can cultural heritage institutions play a role in contributing to the development of responsible AI?

We will be joined by a panel of experts including:

• Suzanne Duncan, Chief Operating Officer at Te Hiku Media, New Zealand
• Minne Atairu, interdisciplinary Artist, and doctoral student in the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA
• Bart Meletti, Head of Knowledge Exchange at CREATe, University of Glasgow, Scotland
• Michael Trizna, Data Scientist, Smithsonian Institution, USA

Register here. 

CC is a non-profit that relies on contributions to sustain our work. Support CC in our efforts to promote better sharing at creativecommons.org/donate.

What is Open Culture Live?

In this series, we tackle some of the more   challenges that face the open culture movement, bringing in speakers with personal and professional expertise on the topic.

• Back to Basics: Open Culture for Beginners 
• Respectful Terminologies & Changing the Subject 
• Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution
• Maximizing the Value(s) of Open Access in Cultural Heritage Institutions

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